As reported in my SBP column yesterday, Eircom today announces that it is upgrading its entry-level broadband packages to 8Mbs from now on.

1Mbs, 3Mbs and 7Mbs customers will be upgraded for free, if you're in the right area. Starts in Dublin, expanded to all cities by the end of the year (by which time UPC will have a 100Mbs product in place across its network). Here are the details (from its press release)...

eircom Launches Next Generation Broadband for Ireland

Next Generation Broadband Product Details

Consumer Products There are 3 consumer NGB products. Each product provides the same
speed of up to 8Mb and has varying download allowances designed to suit
individual customers’ online usage needs:

eircom has alsodropped the price of excess usage charges
from €10.24 per Gigabyte to €2 per Gigabyte. To ensure no excessive broadband
bills are received there will be a monthly bill limit for broadband usage of €50
per month.

Next Generation Broadband rollout will be expanded to all major urban areas
including Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford by the end of the year. Customers
can find out more on www.eircom.net/ngb.

I loved, loved, loved Panasonic's GF1. It's a compact hybrid that takes HD video, supports interchangeable lenses and takes unbelievable Raw images. I have a review in tomorrow's paper about it. But here are a coupe of the point-and-shoot images I took using it (on a very sunny day). The downside? It costs €680 for the body only, with a further €200+ for lenses. In other words, it's as dear as an SLR.

This is shrouded in mystery, as operators say that it is 'commercially sensitive'.

What that really means is that they all know each others' upgrade plans and don't want punters to think that they may be operating on a closely aligned standard.

From my research, here are O2's upgrade criteria:

'Silver' upgrade -- €600 spend required

'Gold' upgrade -- €1,000 spend required

'Platinum' upgrade -- €2,000 spend

'Diamond' upgrade -- €5,000 spend

To the best of my knowledge, you can not avail of your upgrade until your contract is finished. In other words, even if you spend €20,000 on your bill, you must still wait unti your 12 or 18 month contract is up to claim the upgrade(s).

For such a small sliver of a handset, the Vivaz (above) packs one hell of a punch when it comes to taking photos and (HD, 720p) videos. Here's one I took last weekend of Teddy, a fugly 9-month old Cavalier. For a mobile phone, this level of detail is pretty damn impressive...

That's the figure (no link, sorry) being claimed by Digital Reach, a division of AdForce. It's based on data collected from advertising clicks on websites such as RTE, Bebo, Vodafone and Meteor.

If it's true, it means that about one in 10 active mobile phones in Ireland is an iPhone. Given that O2 would be the default operator for the vast majority of these units, it would also imply that about one in every four of the 700,000 post-paid contracts the operator has is used on an iPhone.

The survey also claimed that at least 25,000 of the iPhones-- and possibly up to 80,000 if you extrapolate from its data -- are operating on the Vodafone network, even before the device is officially launched on that network tomorrow.

I haven't seen the exact criteria used for this study. 250,000 does seem a little high. But if it's true, that's some result for Apple.

Google makes 97 per cent of its annual $24 billion from advertising. And almost all of this comes from its Adwords.

As a business trader, you can buy adwords that you think will lead people to your website. But what happens if one of your competitors buys an adword that should be yours? For example, your name or a trademark you've registered?

This has been an ongoing issue for years. Today, the European Court Of Justice finally settled the matter. Your competitor is not legally barred from buying your trademarked adword. But if you complain about it to Google, and you have a valid case, the search engine will withdraw that word or phrase from your competitors' Adwords account.

Apparently, it is an organisation that has been set up by 'cloud computing' specialists to talk about cloud computing. It will also generate policies on cloud computing, advise the government on cloud computing and publish white papers on cloud computing.

There's only one thing missing: any kind of detail as to what the hell they're talking about with regard to cloud computing.

Hotmail is mentioned, but the rest of this 800 word press release is completely devoid of any actual substance.

Perhaps I'm being harsh: here's the press release for you to decide.

[BEGINS]

Dublin, Ireland: Europe's first ever cloud computing organisation has commenced operations in Ireland. EuroCloud Ireland was formed on the 1st Feb 2010 and forms part of the first European network of cloud computing communities. Eurocloud has currently been launched in 15 other European countries and is expected to be in all 27 EU states by the end of 2010.

According to Noel Shannon, EuroCloud Ireland's Chairman, "EuroCloud Ireland aims to be a leading representative body in Ireland for the cloud computing community as a whole while working with the public to enhance its understanding of the role, capabilities and importance of cloud technologies. With an improved understanding of cloud technologies, including the various implementation models e.g. Software as a Service (SaaS), EuroCloud Ireland hopes to ensure a greater take up of cloud technologies in Ireland which in turn will improve Ireland's position as one of the world's leading smart economies.''

EuroCloud Ireland will seek members from the broad spectrum of the cloud community which will include users and product/service providers. EuroCloud Ireland hopes to position its members to be fully informed on all aspects of cloud computing usage, standards, and delivery, so they are best placed to effectively deliver strategic, high value cloud computing solutions to their clients and the public.

The growing importance of cloud computing was highlighted during a recent UK parliament sponsored debate in Westminster, Stephen McGibbon, regional technology officer in Europe for Microsoft, revealed huge figures from Microsoft's own cloud offerings - 1.3 billion Hotmail mailboxes or 40 million people logged onto Windows Live Messenger at one time.

With this huge shift to cloud technology in mind EuroCloud Ireland plans to, among other things, provide policy statements on cloud computing best practice, conduct periodic surveys to gauge how the industry in Ireland is competing effectively, use sub-groups to research specific topics and issue white papers and provide a framework where service providers can benchmark themselves against industry best practice.

Vice Chairman of EuroCloud Ireland, Dave Feenan, is fully aware of the challenges and obstacles which face the roll out of this technology and acknowledges that "while the security and legal environment in Ireland are adequate to foster the growth and roll out of cloud based technologies, steps need to be taken to ensure that cloud technologies are deployed in a manner to ensure that our customers' security and legal concerns are catered for."

EuroCloud Ireland forms part of EuroCloud, a European network of cloud computing communities, which includes vendors and industry experts and has a presence today in 15 other European countries including: Finland, Denmark, Sweden, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany and Spain. Pierre-José Billotte, the President of EuroCloud has said that "something new is really happening in Europe. We are looking forward to supporting and accelerating the growth of cloud computing and SaaS in Europe, by providing this powerful tool called EuroCloud to our members and partners." Noel Shannon, Chairman of EuroCloud Ireland, has also been appointed as a Director to the EuroCloud Board.Gartner, the world's leading information technology research and advisory company, in a recent study of global CIOs, found that while budgets are not really changing, technology and business priorities are, with business process improvement and reducing enterprise costs making the two top spots in terms of business focus, while virtualisation and cloud computing hog those places from the technology side. Noel Shannon, Chairman, also notes that "EuroCloud Ireland further aims to enable and enhance the development of the next generation of added value applications by promoting cloud computing in Ireland as well as contributing to the promotion of cloud computing across Europe through its membership of EuroCloud. This will include input into the current state of the markets and future innovations, and membership of EuroCloud will become a critical exchange platform for EuroCloud Ireland across the different continents."

His analysis is worth a read, as it brings up one or two valid points. But he's fundamentally missing the point of what the Task Force was set up to do.

McCarthy, at the end of the day, is an accountant. (Sorry, an economist -- which is an accountant with a few airs and graces.) His main focus is the bottom line. He really doesn't care whether that bottom line is achieved through cleaning toilets or making silicon chips. It's purely, 100%, a numbers game.

This is fair enough, in its own contained way. We can't run a profligate house. And there is definitely a tendency among Irish 'entrepreneurs', whether in construction, technology, science or farming, to simply put out the begging bowl for state subsidies.

But I've read the Innovation Task Force. It has some decent recommendations. Like reforming personal bankruptcy laws, which are archaic and stupid. It also suggests double points for maths in the Leaving. And reform of certain tax codes, such as abolishing capital gains tax for founders of successful start-ups.

Its whole raison d'etre is to try and come up with a way for Ireland to survive in the long term. To actually have some sort of proper indigenous industry once again.

McCarthy seems to have missed this point. So far as I can make out, he himself has no vision -- whatsoever -- of what we should do next, industrially.

And make no mistake: we have got to come with some sort of industry, fast.

At the moment, Ireland's indigenous industry makes almost nothing. We make food, which does reasonably well abroad. And we have some expertise now in horse-breeding, for all the good that does us. And our tourist industry will survive in the long term.

Aside from that, Ireland is purely an outsourcing location for large multinationals (including pharma and tech), with almost no local brains running any kind of successful, in-demand industry.

You cannot base a country's future on the hope that multinationals will stay content with their factories here. No country has ever done that and kept pace with first-world loving standards.

Furthermore, there are very few first-world countries that do well without making things themselves. Look at Germany, France, the US, Italy, Holland, Scandinavia. The main drivers for their success, and long-term reliability, is that they make things that other countries want. And by indigenous companies.

Now, McCarthy deserves huge respect for the bluntness and the truth he brings to our national economic disaster. I think he's a breath of fresh air. But he is clearly far more comfortable sitting back and picking holes in things rather than suggesting anything. (In fairness, that would make him very representative of the country at large.)

This Task Force report sets 2020 as a target for world-beating, indigenous tech and science companies.

Whether we have the culture, the brains, or the entrepreneurship to reach that target is another matter. But don't blame the Innovation Task Force for bringing it up.

Today, Apple began accepting pre-orders for its iPad (to be released in late April).

Leave aside the hype over the device itself, or the chattering from the fanboys. The iPad's true significance is in the way it might change the commercial model of the internet itself.

Instead of browsing the web, which it will do fairly well (although without Flash), it will emphasise the use of downloadable apps. And, unlike websites, we pay for apps. So Apple is clearly staking out a model that seeks to make money from an internet-type experience.

It has already made a good fist of this with the App Store, which stocks over 150,000 apps and is hurtling towards three billion downloads, an astonishing achievement. Other companies have quickly seen the potential of this model and have moved to create their own apps or app platforms. It is now very likely that there is more development and innovation of apps than general websites.

This is a trend that must be taken seriously, not least by newspapers. Up to now, newspapers have invested lots of money in free websites that have not delivered any significant business for them. Worse, they have sucked readers away from buying the physical product. But an app could be a different proposition.

One of the things I didn't get around to reporting on at CES a few weeks back was Intel's Wimax stand.

It had several laptops on display from Dell and Lenovo (among other brands) that had the Wimax processor built-in. For those unaware, such a laptop can receive a Wimax broadband signal, if it's available. In Ireland, Imagine has launched Wimax and is building it out across the country's biggest cities and towns. The service offers speeds of 7Mbs (for €25 per month).

The Intel demonstrator knew all about Imagine. He knew about the frequencies involved and the general project underway in Ireland. This would tend to lend credence to Imagine's claims that Intel is taking Ireland seriously as a Wimax test-bed.

I asked him about competition, especially from mobile 3G networks, who will soon move to speeds of ("up to") 14Mbs and, according to the head of 3 Ireland, may hit 28Mbs by the end of 2010.

He made one interesting point about mobile 3G broadband. While the speeds can be turned up, there is a lack of spectrum to host very many people using the service at the same time. That means that if the numbers signing on to 3G broadband continue to grow at the pace they're doing at the moment, it doesn't matter how fast a download speed an optimum signal can deliver: it'll never deliver more than 2Mbs or 3Mbs at peak usage times.

Right now, though, 3G definitely has the edge over Wimax. The main reason for this is coverage. If you sign up for a Vodafone, O2, Meteor or 3 Ireland 3G dongle, you can use it just about anywhere in the country. (Okay, so there are a few place not covered. But the vast, vast, VAST majority is covered.)

You can also use it in some European countries (although watch out for data roaming costs, which are insanely expensive). At the moment, you can only use Wimax in a handful of Irish cities and not when you're on the road.